Liquid adhesive and solder are used in forming mechanical and electrical connections in a variety of contexts. For example, liquid adhesive may be used to attach parts together within an electronic device. Solder connections may be formed when it is desired to mount a component to a printed circuit board.
It can be challenging to properly control liquid materials during manufacturing. Liquid materials such liquid adhesives and solder that are not well controlled may intrude into undesired portions of a workpiece. For example, a liquid material that is not properly controlled may wick into undesired areas between closely spaced parts. This excess material can then interfere with the desired operation of a product. Attempts to reduce undesired movement of intrusions of liquid materials by reducing the volume of liquid material that is used are sometimes counterproductive. Solder joints that are formed without using sufficient solder may be unreliable or may not exhibit satisfactory low-resistance electrical connections. Adhesive joints that are formed without using sufficient liquid adhesive may be weak.
To address these concerns, solder dam and glue dam structures have been developed. These structures use features such as ridges to block the flow of liquid materials during assembly operations and thereby contain adhesive and solder in desired areas.
During assembly operations that involve that involve the use of liquid materials, undesired movements of workpiece parts relative to one another should be avoided. If parts are allowed to move with respect to each other before an adhesive or solder joint has been properly formed, the parts may become permanently misaligned. Unintended movement during assembly is sometimes addressed by providing parts with alignment features such as alignment posts and holes.
Strips of double-sided adhesive tape have been used in conjunction with epoxy when mounting display cover glass panels to housing structures in cellular telephones. In this type of arrangement, rectangular pieces of double-sided tape are used at the upper and lower ends of the display. A peripheral bead of epoxy that is sandwiched between the panels and that is separated from the double-sided tape by a raised housing ridge is used in mounting the panel. In this type of scenario, the double-sided tape does not constrain the flow of the epoxy. Conventional dam structures may help prevent undesired adhesive movements, but do not prevent relative movement between parts before a finished adhesive bond has been formed. This can lead to parts that are tilted or otherwise misaligned with respect to each other.
It would therefore be desirable to provide improved ways in which to use liquid materials in the assembly of parts during manufacturing.